Cabrillo High School Teacher John William Gunde, Faces Charges He Sexually Abused Teen Girl
Posted on May 27, 2021     |     Sexual Abuse
Cabrillo High School social studies teacher John William Gunde entered a plea in Orange County Superior Court Tuesday to charges that he had sex with a teenage girl multiple times last year before being arrested in January.
Gunde, a 46-year-old resident of Long Beach, is facing eight counts of engaging in sex acts with a minor and one count of possession of child pornography, according to court documents. The crimes took place when the girl was 15 and 16 years old between October and December 2020, according to authorities.
Buena Park police said they started investigating Gunde in December after he allegedly began talking to the 15-year-old on a dating site sometime in October before switching to personal emails. The family of the victim secured a restraining order against Gunde in March, court documents show.
According to the Long Beach Post, an email conversation included in the restraining order application shows a chain of messages the family alleges the victim exchanged with Gunde’s email “Daddyshome33” on the night of Oct. 17 and early morning hours of Oct. 18. The messages show the user alleged to be Gunde repeatedly asking the girl about her sexual experience, if her emails were being monitored by her parents and what she’d be willing to do with him.
“How ‘far’ would you like it to go?” one message said. “What is popping into your head right now? What ideas of how far? Write them…I’m not in your head…and I’m not there in your bed…you gotta tell me.”
The Daddyshome33 email account and the girl exchanged messages for about four hours, which allegedly ended in Gunde driving to the girl’s Orange County home around 2 a.m. on Oct. 18 to pick her up.
The Long Beach Post reported that Court documents filed by the girl’s family allege Gunde had sex with her multiple times from Oct. 22 through Dec. 13, including at least one instance where he tied her down to do so. The last of those instances allegedly took place at the Buena Park Inn near the Knott’ Soak City Water Park.
A spokesman for the Long Beach Unified School District said in January that Gunde began working for LBUSD in 1998 at Stephens Middle School and transferred to Cabrillo in 2008. He was placed on administrative leave after his Jan. 6 arrest. On Feb. 3, the school board placed him on unpaid leave indefinitely pending the outcome of his criminal case.
Any other victims of John William Gunde or anyone with information on the case should contact the Long Beach or Buena Park Police.
Manly, Stewart & Finaldi has represented hundreds of child sexual abuse victims of teachers and coaches in California schools and Universities. We were the lead attorneys helping sexual abuse victims in recover $852 million from the University of Southern California. We are also the lead attorneys representing Olympic athletes and victims of former US Olympic Women’s Gymnastics Team Doctor Larry Nassar and secured a $500 million settlement for our clients. In each of these cases we have helped victims and families get justice by conducting a thorough investigation of the organization and the school . We secured a settlement of $140 million on behalf of 81 child sexual abuse victims at Miramonte Elementary School in Los Angeles. This was the largest child sexual abuse settlement by a public school district in history. In many cases we have discovered that administrators and executives know that the perpetrator was a danger to children and either did nothing or actively covered up the crimes.